


Hazard Pay

by ckret2



Series: No Kings Only Monsters (KOTM continuity / related oneshots) [19]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Companion Piece, Gen, Humor, POV Human, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-29 12:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21140345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Boston is a string of destruction from Fenway to the Financial District, and weeks after the four-way titan battle, workers are still toiling around the clock to clean out the rubble. And yet, when Ghidorah returns to the scene of the battle, the city comes to a hushed halt.Meaning there’s nothing for a pack of nearby demolition workers to do but sit in the shade and see if they can get a cool video of Ghidorah walking around.





	Hazard Pay

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted August 8.
> 
> This is a companion fic to [Machine Maker Music](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071504); in it, Ghidorah interacts with some humans in a vague distant way like they're some kinda aliens; I thought it'd be interesting to do a companion piece from the perspective of the humans, interacting with Ghidorah in a vague distant way like he's some kinda alien. I'm really fascinated by the contrast between when kaiju's actions are shown from their perspective, or at least in a way that demonstrates their feelings and thoughts, versus when their actions are shown from the perspective of the humans reacting to them. They shift back and forth between being people and being phenomena. I thought it'd be neat to use two different stories around the same event to explore that.

Cameron waved to the half dozen demolition workers sitting in the shade across the street from their work site. A couple of them wearily waved back. He lifted a twelve pack of bottled water in the air, and a couple workers weakly applauded. "Courtesy of the Boston Fire Department." He sat on the curb, tore a hole in the plastic wrapping, and claimed a bottle for himself before everyone else raided it.

He held out a bottle to Beck—who was standing in the middle of the street like an idiot who didn't know what shade was for—and shook it at her.

"Oh. Thanks." She distractedly took the bottle and moved back out into the street, raising her cell phone to the west again.

"Get out of the sun. You look like a strawberry."

"Uh-uh. I can see Ghidorah from here." She attempted to unscrew her bottle with her teeth so she wouldn't have to lower her phone.

"Is he doing anything?"

"Mm-mm." She gave up on using her teeth, stuck the bottle between her thighs, and used her free hand to unscrew it. "Not yet. He's just looking at the ground."

"Then sit down. You're not gonna film something that'll beat that video of the lightning wing thing, and I'm getting hotter looking at you. See this?" He held out his arm, turning it back and forth so she could see how the sweat shone on his dark brown skin. "That's your fault."

She blew a raspberry and didn't move. He waved her off and removed his hardhat to (ineffectively) fan himself with it.

“It’s not even that hot,” Yakov said, sitting by Cameron. “The humidity spiked when Ghidorah got here.”  


Yacov also had his phone out, but _he_ was sitting in the shade sensibly, tapping at the screen. Cameron nodded at Yacov’s phone. "Any word from Fred?"

Fred was their supervisor. Fred was an ass. When everyone's cell phones had made the shrill emergency tone alerting them to an approaching titan, Fred had jumped in one of the work pickups and took off.

With their water.

And the keys to the other work pickup.

So here they were.

"Nothing," Yacov said. "Got a live feed from Fenway, though."

"Told you," Beck said. "Told you he went back to Fenway."

Cameron grimaced at Yakov. "You're gonna kill your battery, man."

He shrugged.

Several jets streaked by overhead. Everyone froze, squinting up into the bright sky. Beck shielded her eyes to watch Ghidorah look up at them, too. When the noise died down with no missiles being fired, Beck asked, "Do you think we're still on the clock?"

"We'd better be," Cameron said. "We'd better be getting overtime for this. Or hazard pay. We've got the Air Force and a titan here, that's like working in a war zone. Fuckin' _Ghidorah_ of all titans, too."

"We are literally in the middle of an alien invasion," Yakov muttered.

"Bet Fred's gonna make us come in on Saturday to finish this job," Beck said. "I've got a wedding to get to."

"_I'm_ not coming in on Saturday," Yacov mumbled. (He was perpetually excused from working Friday evenings or Saturdays for religious reasons; he'd cheerily offered to do Sunday jobs instead, which was, of course, never gonna happen in Boston.) He jerked his head up. "Hey! Ghidorah flipped a tank."

"No way." Cameron leaned over to try to see Yacov's phone. "We'd be able to hear the fighting from here, wouldn't we?"

"No, no, he—" Yacov was grinning. "He just picked it up and turned it over. With his mouth."

Beck laughed obnoxiously, and lowered her phone to look it up herself.

"Like he's playing with it," Yacov went on.

Cameron huffed. "How're they gonna get the soldiers out of that tank?"

Yacov shrugged. "Call Godzilla to turn it back over?" Beck laughed again.

Ghidorah ducked out of view for long enough that Beck decided it wasn't worth standing in the middle of the road anymore, joined the others on the curb, and started trying to egg them into helping her brainstorm memes you could make out of an upside-down tank. (No one was interested in helping. Yacov insisted that memes had to evolve more naturally than that.) All their phones buzzed with a second alert, warning them that Ghidorah was moving east on I-90. Cameron tried to find a vantage point from which he could watch the approaching titan without leaving the shade, and the group discussed the wisdom of trying to catch a ride to avoid him.

"Maybe we don't _have_ to run," Yacov said, as if any of them had budged from the curb after discussing the possibility. His phone had died, and Beck had reluctantly surrendered hers so he could keep up with the news. "It sounds like he's going slow and watching where he steps and shit. As long as we don't run under his feet, we should be fine."

"Aren't they radioactive?" Beck asked. 

"That's Godzilla." 

"Aren't they all?" 

Yacov shrugged. 

"Maybe he's looking for someone to step on," Cameron said. He could see two of the three heads bobbing around in the general area of the Hynes Convention Center, just a few blocks west now. Damn, he was so much bigger than Cameron had expected. Footage taken by helicopters five miles away really didn't demonstrate how titanic a titan was like staring up at one from the ground did.

"Don't think so," Yacov said. "No reported injuries so far besides one of the guys in the tank."

"Aww, tank guy." Cameron put his hardhat over his heart.

Ghidorah disappeared from view behind a skyscraper.  


"Oh—your girlfriend texted," Yacov said to Beck. "She wants to know how close you are to the danger zone."

Beck, who was rolling her water bottle over her cheeks in some futile attempt to use the condensation to wash off her blooming sunburn, said, "Tell her he ate me. Tell her I'm dead."

Yacov laughed while Cameron said, "Beck, what the hell?"

"She told me Godzilla crushed my parrot! It's revenge. It's fair." She leaned over to watch as Yacov typed. "Add a ghost emoji."

Ghidorah reappeared on the other side of the skyscraper, and Cameron stumbled back a step. "Oh _shit_." The titan was a lot closer now. And he was turning down their street.

Beck hissed, "Gimme gimme gimme," grabbed her phone back from Yacov, and stood to record. The other workers farther down the curb jumped to their feet as well.

"Okay," Cameron said, turning slowly to the others, "So, the strategy is... to _not_ stand under his feet, right? That's our whole strategy?" They nodded in vague agreement, moving back toward the nearby building without looking away from Ghidorah.

Beck swore as her phone died, stuffed it in her pocket, and glowered up at Ghidorah.

Then she looked across the street at the building they were supposed to be demolishing. And back at Ghidorah. And at the building.

And turned to the rest of the crew. "Hey," she said. "I've got an idea. Show of hands, who _doesn't_ want to come in on a Saturday to get this building demolished?" Five hands cautiously went up. "Who did Fred leave his whistle with?"

###

A shrill whistling sound came from somewhere around their feet. They looked down, expecting to see that they’d stepped on something noisy, but instead saw a cluster of machine makers together, waving wildly to get their attention. What? What in the world did they want? They eyed them warily to see if they had anything that looked like weapons, then lowered their heads, getting closer.

Once they had their attention, the machine makers stopped waving, and one in the middle stepped forward, pointed up at them, pointed at a building across the street, and then pantomimed an exaggerated punch toward the building. 

They glanced at the building. It was heavily damaged, one wall half caved in. 

They couldn’t remember if that one was their fault or the little king’s; were the machine makers scolding them for damaging it? Or maybe asking them to finish the job. That building wasn’t very stable. It would be far easier to bring it down than to fix it up.

One of them looked at the machine maker again; it repeated the punch gesture, and all the machine makers looked up at them expectantly. Well. Why not.

They raised a tail up, whipped it around, and slammed it into the building’s damaged wall. One swing was all it took to make the building crumble in on itself and slowly collapse. The machine makers that had been waving scattered, sprinting down the street to dodge falling debris. Idiots.

###

Putting his hardhat back on as he sprinted, Cameron yelled, "We'd _better_ be getting hazard pay! Holy shit!"

"Fred's gonna kill us!" Yacov said, twisting around to see if anything was actively falling in their direction. All he could see was a mass of golden scales stretching upward. He almost tripped over his own feet. "Beck, _I'm _gonna kill _you!_"

Beck had both her hands clapped over her head protectively and was grinning from ear to ear. "You're just jealous I gave an order to a dragon!"

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/186878610422/hazard-pay). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


End file.
